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LEXOPHILES - May 31, 2014 5/31/2014 9:06:15 AM
The same day we were sent to interview Milton Berle we were also sent to the King James Motel on Monroe Ave. in Rochester to interview David Brenner, who, according to a news broadcast Chris and I saw on NBC-TV in 2014, had recently died .
“Damn it!” I said in my Georgia home at that time, “I completely forgot all about David Brenner! I never mentioned him in the piece I wrote so I wouldn’t forget the celebrities I had met and interviewed when I was on the air! Damn it all!”
I said, “He set records being invited as Johnny Carson’s guest more than 170 times!”
“You saying he subbed for Carson more than 170 time?” she was quick to ask. “Who else did you know? Joey Bishop?”
“No,” I said. “Joey Bishop, I think, holds the most subbing record, but I think Brenner was Carson’s most frequent guest. . . I met Perry Como once but I never interviewed him. I noticed he had a gigantic paw when we shook hands; I never knew a man with such a huge right hand. Como was amazing!”
“Who else?”
“Sammy Davis, Junior.,” I told her. “Twice, I met him. Once, when he was performing at the Triton on East Ave., and once in New York when a bunch of us on-air personalities were invited to speak with him for a minute and forty seconds, precise1y, on tape, at a party for him at the Tavern on the Green in Central Park. I never used the tape. Tom Ryan crapped out, and at the last minute I was sent to New York.”
“Tom Ryan?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “Ryan wasn’t even a disc jockey. He was — allegedly — a newsman!”
“I never heard about that,” she pouted.
“There were a couple things I never told you about,” I admitted. “Like the time I dated Eydie Gormé at the behest of her agent at the time, Hymie Greene. That was long before her thing with Steve Lawrence and the Tonight Show with Steve Allen; she wanted more than anything to get married back then, but, as you know, I was already hitched up, so to speak.”
“You never told me about that,” Christine repeated. “When was all this? Where did you all go?”
“In L.A. To the Pantageous Theater,” I told her. “The highlight was James Garner was just ahead of us in line at the Box Office. We saw Brigadoon and the MGM version of It’s Always Fair Weather starring Cyd Charrise and Gene Kelly.”
“And then,” I was told, “afterward, she married Tony Martin.”
“Who? Eydie Gormé?” I asked.
“No, silly! Cyd Charrise! Only she kept the last name of her first husband: Charrise.”
“Oh. I guess Cyd ‘Martin’ did not sound as good,” I said.
She quickly let me change the subject. “So, what happened with you and David Brenner?”
“Not much,” I told my wife. “Charlie Planert was still going through his ‘Milton Berle-education-phase’,” (story was published last Saturday) “so he took a lot of time setting up the lights and camera and everything, which was good, because it gave lots of time for Brenner to tell me about his latest gig: he was genuinely interested in Lexophiles.”
“Lexo — what did you say?”
“A Lexophile is a person who uses a word to describe what he means by using words in a rather unique way, such as you can tune a piano, but you cannot tune a fish, or, to write with a broken pencil is pointless. Or, a thief who stole a calendar got twelve months, or, when the smog lifts in Los Angeles, U.C.L.A., or, the batteries were given out free of charge, or, a dentist and a manicurist got married; they fought tooth and nail. You get the idea. . . .”
“The entire interview went that way?”
“Yes.”
“Did you use most of it on the air?”
“Yes. Most of the response I got was from people such as those who use words like a will is a dead giveaway, and, with her marriage, she got a new name and address, and, a boiled egg is hard to beat, and, when you've seen one shopping center you've seen ‘em all, and, the police were called to a day care center where a three-year-old was resisting arrest. Brenner had a million of em!”
“Tell me more!”
“Well, did you hear about the fellow whose whole left side was cut off? — he’s all right now, or, a bicycle cannot stand upright if it’s too tired, or, when a clock is hungry it goes back for seconds, or, the guy who fell into an upholstery machine is now fully recovered.”
“What else did he say?”
“Well, there was an old lady who saw her first s strands of gray hair and thought she had died.” I was on a roll now; “or, acupuncture is a jab well done? That is the point of it,” I added.
“How did he finish the interview?” she insisted.
“He simply said, ‘those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end’.”
My young wife was silent for a while; then she asked, “Was Brenner out of steam?”
“I think so.”
“Did many come out to see him?”
“I doubt it. Not many.”
“Did your boss like the interview?”
“He died with a smile on his chops,” I replied, which made no sense at all.
“Shush!” she said; “I want to hear what Brian Williams is saying on TV about the girls in Nigeria.”
Copyright . 2014, Robert A. Mills, all rights reserved, may not be published, re-written or broadcast without permission of the author
